


The Other Other Minister

by halfeatenmoon



Category: Doctor Who, Harry Potter - Rowling
Genre: Crossover, Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-05
Updated: 2010-01-05
Packaged: 2017-10-05 20:54:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/45936
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/halfeatenmoon/pseuds/halfeatenmoon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kingsley Shacklebolt expected Prime Ministers to be shocked the first time they met the Minister for Magic, but this time it was the new Prime Minister who shocked him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Other Other Minister

Harriet Jones, MP for Flydale North, was not sure what to expect after her encounter with the Slitheen. When the Doctor had departed so suddenly that nobody knew who to turn to for explanations and clearing up all the confusion fell to her, when she spent weeks doing one interview after another and became so involved in the reconstruction of Parliament House that she barely had time to think of anything, she hadn’t considered what was supposed to happen next. But once all that was gone and it was time to return to business as usual, she wasn’t sure whether she could. Perhaps the rest of Britain, the rest of the world, could go on as though nothing had happened, but she had been too involved to pretend that nothing had changed. Aliens had landed on Earth and infiltrated the British parliament, and as far as Harriet Jones (MP for Flydale North) was concerned, the world had changed forever.

And yet, she wasn’t sure whether it _had_ changed forever; whether things would go on being _different_. Because, really, what was one alien invasion? It could simply be one single, isolated event in the Earth’s history and they might never see the slightest hint of alien life for centuries to come. Yet at the same time, surely just knowing that life existed on other planets should change everything they do? After all, if the Slitheen could infiltrate the British Parliament then who knew how many aliens could be roaming the planet undercover? Who knew when the next alien threat – or, she hoped, a friendly encounter – could occur?

To Harriet Jones it seemed just as likely that either there would be many more alien encounters in the years ahead, or that life on Britain would continue as before without a single encounter until humans finally managed to engineer space ships that could travel far and fast enough to reach other inhabited planets. She was prepared for either possibility. In fact, Harriet Jones was prepared for almost any event occurring within Great Britain or indeed anywhere on planet Earth that could possibly affect the residents of the electorate for which she so faithfully stood, even as a lowly backbencher. She was prepared for anything – except the entirely unexpected event of her becoming Prime Minister.

And so it was that on the first occasion on which she was left alone in her brand new office – and it was probably the newest Office of the Prime Minister of Britain that any Prime Minister of Britain had ever stood in, having only recently been rebuilt - she was actually not all that surprised to find that a very small, dirty and ugly portrait in the corner of the room was talking to her.

“To the Prime Minister of Muggles. Congratulations on your new post. The Minister for Magic will arrive shortly to introduce himself.”

“How remarkable!” Harriet Jones exclaimed, hurrying over to examine the portrait. “Is this some kind of new video communications system? It’s extraordinary! However did they make it look as though it’s a real painting?”

“This is a real painting, Prime Minister,” said the little man in the portrait. “I was once the Minister for Magic and it was I who decided that the Ministry should establish a communications channel with the Muggle Prime Minister in times of need, so I had two portraits of myself painted – one here, and one in the Minister’s office, so that I could relay messages.”

“How extraordinary! That’s an utterly marvellous piece of technology. But however does it work? I’ve never seen anything like it!”

“That’s because it’s magic, Prime Minister.”

But before Harriet could ask any more questions, there was a loud ‘Pop!’ behind her and she turned around to see a tall man wearing rich purple robes and a bowler hat that didn’t suit him at all.

“Oh, hello,” said Harriet, “Did you teleport in?”

“No, Prime Minister, as a matter of fact I Apparated here. It’s a fairly straightforward spell, although it takes most people a long time to get the knack and many of them don’t like using it. They find broomsticks a lot safer. I’ve always had a knack for Apparition, though.”

This took a little bit longer for Harriet to digest as this was not a terminology that she was accustomed to, but she was sure they could get around to explaining that later. Determined to be professional in her first meeting with someone who appeared to be a foreign minister of some description – even if he was British, this man was not a member of her government – she smoothed her skirt, sat down behind her desk with her shoulders squared and clasped her hands on the table.

“Pleased to meet you. I’m Harriet Jones, Prime Minister.”

“Yes, I know who you are,” the man responded. “I am Kingsley Shacklebolt, Minister for Magic. Is there anywhere I could put this hat? Blasted thing. I can’t stand bowler hats, but someone insisted that I wear one because Fudge always wore a bowler when he went to meet the Muggles and you’d be expecting it.”

“Not at all. I agree; bowler hats are all very well for some but they really don’t suit you, Minister. Just put it there on the table and pull up a chair.”

“Thank you very much, Prime Minister.”

“Oh, and please, call me Harriet. I’m really not used to all this ‘Prime Minister’ business – only a few weeks ago I was just a backbencher.”

“Very well, Harriet. Would you prefer to call me Kingsley?”

“It would be my pleasure, Kingsley. Now, what is it that you’ve come here to discuss? It will be my first ministerial meeting as Prime Minister, you know?”

Kingsley eyed her curiously. “You don’t seem at all surprised to see me, Harriet. I don’t suppose there are any witches or wizards in your family, are there?”

“No, not at all,” Harriet said, with a laugh, “Of course, I used to think my great-aunt Arabella was a witch just because she was a bit mad and had lots of cats and broomsticks, but I don’t think that really counts, do you?”

“So you’ve never heard of the Ministry of Magic or the wizarding world until just now? Because from what I’m told, the usual response from the Prime Minister upon meeting the Minister is to make an appointment with a psychiatrist to make sure that they’re not going mad.”

“And I suppose after that they call the previous Prime Minister to ask what’s going on, and hang up the phone concluding that their predecessor was mad as well?”

“Well, if any new Prime Ministers have done that in the past, then I haven’t heard of it,” Kingsley said, running a hand over his bald head, “But it wouldn’t be at all surprising.”

“I suppose I can understand that.” Truthfully sometimes it was difficult for Harriet Jones to remember a time when a man appearing out of nowhere would have been an earth-shattering sort of surprise. She had spent so much of the last few months wishing for the Doctor to return, or at least some form of alien life to keep things interesting, that she was rather excited to find that there was a Minister for Magic. She wasn’t sure yet whether it was quite as exiting as finding aliens in her Cabinet would be, but all the same she couldn’t wait to find out more about what the Ministry of Magic did. “At any rate, you needn’t worry too much about me. I was in Parliament when the Slitheen attacked, you know, and when you’ve destroyed Parliament House fighting aliens, you learn to accept all sorts of odd things. Did you hear about that little incident?”

“Briefly, yes,” Kingsley said, “But most of the wizarding community were completely unaware of it. The British magical folk keep themselves very separate from the Muggle world and don’t take much interest in non-magical affairs. It’s understandable, since we have to keep hidden much of the time, but sometimes I wonder whether it’s a flaw.”

“Yes, you must keep yourself very well hidden since magic doesn’t even seem to appear in any government records that I’ve come across – and I’ve come across and awful lot of odd things, even the archives of alien documentation from Torchwood that I’m not supposed to know about.”

“Indeed. We like to stay hidden, which is why the only official communications are between the Minister for Magic and the Prime Minister.” Kingsley cleared his throat at that. “Well, I had expected to have to spend rather longer than this explaining who I am and how I just materialised in your office, but you don’t seem to have much of a problem with that, so why don’t I get onto the serious matters, hmmm?”

“Oh, of course, Kingsley. Are we going to talk about magical policy or something?” Harriet’s eyes brightened, and then she suddenly stood up and smacked her forehead. “Goodness me, I’m being a terrible host, I haven’t even offered you a drink! Would you like some tea before we start on the serious stuff?”

Kingsley stood up as well, and with a polite cough, suggested that Harriet had been very restrained and polite in not demanding proof of his magical ability, and he knew that it was her job as host to provide refreshments, but if she didn’t mind, he thought they might have something more appropriate to the occasion. He drew a wand from his pocket, to her fascination, and conjured a bottle of champagne and two flutes from thin air. When she laughed with delight at this, he decided that although one was supposed to be restrained with magic when doing these introductions, Harriet was not an ordinary Muggle, and so he decided to show off a little more. With a flick of his wrist, the cork popped out of the bottle and burst into a shower of flower petals that floated gently down to the desk.

“To the new Prime Minister,” Kingsley said, raising his glass.

“To a long and peaceful reign for both of us,” Harriet clinked her glass to his, and they drank.

They decided to do away with all this stuffy formal business of sitting opposite that dreadful great desk and shifted the chairs so that they could sit in front of the fireplace. Kingsley lit the fire with his wand and as they talked he occasionally played with the flames, making them burn blue or green or dance up to form odd shapes that sometimes looked almost like people. Harriet found this a pleasant little entertainment but she was far more interested in what Kingsley was saying.

The standard practice when meeting a new Prime Minister, Kingsley had been told, was to cover only the most basic information and then disappear for a while to let them get over the shock. Hopefully, of course, there would never be another occasion for them to meet, as that was almost inevitably a result of bad news, and so the amount of information that the Prime Minister needed to know was minimal. Harriet Jones, however, was the exact opposite of everything that Kingsley had been told to expect. It had taken only minutes to cover the basic information: what the Ministry did, what the position of the wizarding world was in relation to the Muggles and under what circumstances Harriet would need to be concerned with magical activity. And yet as the night wore on she still wanted to know more – which was perfectly fine as Kingsley wasn’t all that reluctant to talk.

It was refreshing to talk to such an intelligent and open-minded Muggle; so different from most encounters that magical folk had with Muggles, who usually just wanted to pretend that they didn’t exist. That was something that the wizarding world simply accepted as a fact of life, but in a way it was a little depressing that most of the world was so uncomfortable with the fact of their existence that it was easier to imagine them away. And he had had few occasions to discuss his own society in such depth of this, and it made him think about the wizarding world itself in an entirely different way. Harriet even pointed out one or two niggling little issues that he hadn’t really thought of as serious before – it could, perhaps, take an outsider, a Muggle, to see what was wrong sometimes. And to think the previous Ministers had all regarded these visits as a burden.

At one point he did hesitate. He stopped and wondered out loud whether he should be talking about these things, whether or not it was a breach of the statute of secrecy to be divulging so much information to a Muggle – even if Harriet was the Prime Minister.

“But Kingsley,” she assured him, “If I have the right of it, even doing magic in front of me, just providing this magnificent champagne, is a breach of the statute. Surely if it’s okay for me to see a little, it can’t be all that much worse for me to hear about it? If anything, the more I know the better I can deal with the effects of any issues in your world. Power corrupts, Kingsley, it’s a well-known fact here, and magic seems a powerful force. I’m sure there are wizards who haven’t used it for good.”

Kingsley laughed then, but he didn’t explain to Harriet just how right she was. Things were going so nicely. Best not to scare her just yet.

Eventually, though, it was getting a bit too late for Kingsley to be hanging about and Harriet agreed that it was probably time to call it a night. Kingsley did away with the champagne flutes with a wave of his wand – leaving the bottle as a memento, at Harriet’s request – and bid the new Prime Minister farewell and good luck.

“When will we meet next, Minister?” Harriet asked as they shook hands.

“Traditionally the Minister for Magic only communicates with the Prime Minister when there’s trouble in the wizarding community that might affect…” he trailed off as he saw the disappointed look on her face.

“What a pity,” she murmured. “Surely there’s more good to be done by having open and frequent communications? Isn’t it better that I keep up to date with the situations even when things are going well? Before they get out of hand?”

Kingsley felt much the same way.

“It is just a tradition,” he said, smiling, after a few moments of deliberation. “And I suppose it came about because the past Prime Ministers wanted as little to do with magic as possible. But I suppose… I suppose if a Prime Minister were willing to have more… open channels of communication…”

“Shall we make it a fortnight from now?” Harriet suggested.

“That sounds like an appropriate interval,” Kingsley agreed. “I look forward to seeing you then, Harriet Jones. I believe Britain is in very good hands.”

Excellent, Harriet thought, as she watched Kingsley Disapparate again. Most excellent. Every bit as exciting as the aliens, and apparently not nearly as likely to be megalomaniacs bent on overthrowing her government. Harriet Jones, Prime Minister, went to sleep on her first night in office knowing that she was going to enjoy this job much more than she had thought.


End file.
